Chapter One~Dark Night of the Soul

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings- oh, happy chance!
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

First Stanza of Dark Night...

It has been a short time since I started reading this. I have been thinking about it, meditating upon it, praying about it, in order to know what to write here regarding it.

The spiritual road is a journey that will not end until our death. In the process of traveling that road, we recognize our human failings and, with God's help, attempt to overcome them. We reach for Him, for his closeness, for His mercy, for His grace...but we recognize our unworthiness and want to please Him, knowing that in and of ourselves we are incapable of pleasing, but through our love, and the DESIRE to please Him, we can achieve more than if we simply give up.

So, we look inward and see our faults. We hold the law up as a mirror to ourselves and see how unworthy we are...how arrogant, how lustful, how grotesque our physical yearnings are and hope that through Spirit, we can let Christ overcome our flesh.

Some throughout history have used different forms of mortification of the flesh to ...prove (?) their desire to overcome the flesh and put spiritual above physical desires. Unfortunately, even this can lead to an arrogance as well. A spiritual arrogance that inflates one's opinion of one's own worth in our eyes. A blinding arrogance as to our own faults.

Fasting is well and good, but for the right reasons, we fast not to show what 'good Christians' we are or can be, we fast not to 'follow a rule' and be viewed by our fellow man as a wonderfully faithful person. Our fasting should be for the purpose ONLY of drawing us closer to God. If we are looking for human condolances or kudos, or receiving pleasure of someone giving us those kudos for our willingness to fast (or any other mortification) then we are doing it for pride and human purposes, not for the purpose of drawing us closer to God.

However, when we DO fast for the proper reasons, for the purpose of drawing nearer to God, we see our own imperfections so much more clearly. God shows us the weaknesses of our flesh and his strength is so much more apparent, his miracles so much more beautiful, his Word and works so much more clearly defined. In seeing our own imperfections, we feel shame and sorrow. It is our desire to draw closer to Him that creates even more pain in the awareness that we are so weak, so unable to overcome our own imperfections, but our love for Him that we desire to not cause Him any more pain than we already have.

In that sorrow, in that recognition of our weaknesses, we experience a dark night...but it has great value in shining light upon the darkness of our souls, that we might offer our souls up to God for His ability to clean them.

God bless